


something beyond burns through

by ALsannan



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 11:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6327127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALsannan/pseuds/ALsannan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the end of Season 2</p><p>Matt Murdock mourns Elektra in the only way he knows how, with bloody fists. The wreckage she's left of his life smolders and he remembers what it felt like to burn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something beyond burns through

**Author's Note:**

> Don't get me wrong, I love Kastle, but I still think Elektra is the best part of season two by many many miles. 
> 
> Part of the inspiration for this sort of interconnected one shot type fic is the Elektra of greek myth, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra who plotted with her brother to murder their mother in revenge for killing their father. It's super twisted and I highly recommend looking it up. 
> 
> The title is taken from my favorite quote about the color red, Elektra's signature color, from G.K. Chesterton:
> 
> "Red is the most joyful and dreadful thing in the physical universe; it is the fiercest note, it is the highest light, it is the place where the walls of this world of ours wear thinnest and something beyond burns through."

Elektra burned scarlet in a world on fire and Matt sees her everywhere.

 

He’s no fool. He knows true scarlet when he sees it. Maroon is the color of night-washed alleyways. That sick mustard yellow is the color criminals bleed. Burnt orange is the morning sun. Coral looks like Karen Page and lights in the shape of peppers. Gold is Clarie’s hands smoothing the edge of a bandage.

 

Scarlet is Elektra.

 

Everyone else burns inside out, but the flames cling to her. She leaves them in her wake, a trail of burning embers that leave no ashes.

 

Even after she’s gone, he sees the places she’s dripped her flames all over the city.

 

* * *

 

 

When he was eight, his father took him to the metropolitan museum. Mostly, this was an exercise in futility. Battlin’ Jack, for all the hopes he had for his son, had no interest in art and even less knowledge. Tickets were pay as you wish, but even those audiotape tours were out of their price range so instead they just wandered aimlessly through cavernous hallways and ancient religions held tight behind glass.

 

It was one of the last things they did, before he lost his sight. He remembers the way his father shuffled through the rooms, dutifully, furrowing his brow as they passed through bedrooms from the 17th century, beds never slept in, temples from ancient Rome recreated stone for stone, windows that looked in on other rooms into other hallways into corridors, on and on and on. A labyrinth of time held still.

 

He was eight; too young for museums. It didn’t leave much of an impression. Except one spot.

 

The Hall of Greek and Roman Art. One room, at the end of the hall. Like an ancient atrium, but filled with statues. Marble figures of gods, demi-gods, nymphs, heroes. Frozen forever in their acts of valor, their sins and their loves. All of them, staring out for eternity from flat white eyes. He remembers walking out over the tiles, feeling their stares on his back, unchanging and unmoved.

 

The feeling never left. He lost his sight and everyone’s eyes turned flat. Their stares followed him. The stares of marble and stone. The stares of the gods.

 

* * *

 

 

He picks a lot of fights, for awhile.

 

There’s not much to do anyway. And they are bad guys. Criminals. Members of the underworld. 

 

He needs the practice. He was getting used to being a team. It’s strange to fight on his own.

 

Karen calls. Keeps her distance. He never answers. Her messages are enough. He can hear the edge in her voice, the one that started with Wilson Fisk, growing sharper. Ground on the whetstone of Frank Castle no doubt.

 

Foggy stays silent.

 

* * *

 

  

The thing about the saints, in the end, is that they always burn, but they always wait until the end.

 

It’s a dramatic ending. It makes a point. They live and then they burn and that’s it.

 

They never tell you how to live when you’re burning.

 

* * *

 

 

There’s an alley and a storm and a blur the night he finally catches that knife. He turns into it and he feels it slice through him and wonder if this was always the end for a good catholic boy raised on penance. The blood is warm and the rain is cold and they both feel like absolution.

 

He doesn’t remember calling Claire but she’s there like she was summoned by something. Pain, maybe. It’s the only thing they have in common, when he thinks about it, which is why he tries not to think about it.

 

She sews his wounds and lays him to rest in the sheets that still smell like Elektra. He closes his eyes and wishes he were more than blind, so he couldn’t sense her steady presence in the next room, wishes just for once that he could retreat into the darkness like everyone else.

 

“One of these days, there won’t be enough pieces left of you for me to sew together.”

 

She’s sitting in his living room, with her back to him, but he hears her like she knew he would. He doesn’t answer.

 

“Your friend Foggy called me the other day,” She continues. He can hear her set down her glass on the coffee table. He can hear the bead of condensation as it falls from the rim, travels down the side to the table’s surface. “He said he was just checking in, catching up, sending a friendly hello. It got a little awkward when he didn’t actually remember my name.”

 

Matt listened to her heartbeat, slow and rhythmic.

 

“See, he didn’t call to talk to me. He called to ask about you.”

 

Her pulse got stronger. The blood pumped harder but not faster. It always did, before she made her point.

 

“Didn’t get around to it. He must have chickened out, or something. But I’m glad he didn’t ask.”

 

He heard her head turn. A subtle shift in the air.

 

“I don’t want to tell him this.”

 

* * *

 

  

He remembers…something…about Elektra.

 

Not the woman he knew. He remembers every detail of her. The other Elektra. The legend.

 

He was studying it at Columbia right around the time he started skipping classes for the living, breathing version, so he doesn’t remember it well. A lot of blood, a lot of tragedy. Greek.

 

He never bothered to learn how it ended or how it began. Never had much of a stomach for murder, even in the stories. Someone dies, someone pays. That’s how these things go.

 

Except for Elektra. Somehow, it’s the only thing he remembers.

 

In the story, the furies let her go.


End file.
